Education

When a child asks you a question like this, you have a few options. You can shut her down with a "Just because." You can explain: "Red is for stop and green is for go." Or, you can turn the question back to her and help her figure out the answer with plenty of encouragement.

A lot of what's going on today in Marna Wolak's fifth-grade math class is pretty familiar. She's got her students gathered on the rug for a number talk, something she does often, trying to get them thinking about fractions.

But a lot of it is unfamiliar, too. The topic is new — dividing whole numbers by fractions. Also, today there are five more adults in the room, including two other teachers from Sanchez Elementary School here in San Francisco.

Education writer Paul Tough attracted a lot of attention for his 2012 book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. In that book, Tough traveled around the country and visited children from a variety of demographic backgrounds, and in a variety of life circumstances to learn the commonalities that led to success.

The answer sits somewhere on the scales of human achievement. On one side: natural talent. On the other: hard work. Many would argue that success hangs in some delicate balance between them. But not Anders Ericsson.

Each year, the Civic Music Association of Milwaukee rewards teachers and administrators from the area for their accomplishments. This year’s top honoree as Teacher of the Year is Benjamin Zabor, who is director of band and orchestra at MPS' Rufus King International High School.

The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report annually rank high schools nationally and by state. In 2016, neither list includes a Wisconsin high school in its top 100. Of the higher-ranking state schools, nearly all are located in the Milwaukee area, with Cedarburg and New Berlin Eisenhower showing up on both lists.

This election year, Marketplace is casting its eyes toward the future, asking how the country can address long-term opportunities and threats — the ones that don’t fit into a single federal budget or election cycle. We'll imagine and ask you, if the next president were to appoint a Cabinet member to worry about future generations, what would be job one? Got an idea? Tell us here.

Bloodletting to keep the "humors" in balance was a leading medical treatment from ancient Greece to the late 19th century. That's hard to believe now, in the age of robot-assisted surgery, but "doctors" trusted lancets and leeches for centuries.

To Nobel laureate Carl Wieman, the college lecture is the educational equivalent of bloodletting, one long overdue for revision.

Ask an elementary school student what his or her favorite part of school is, and there’s a decent chance that recess might be the answer. However as schools stress academics, the time reserved recess is increasingly the first to be taken away.

Many UW System graduates must start paying back their student loans six months after leaving school. The average grad here faces about $30,000 worth of student debt. An effort is underway to persuade employers to adopt a new benefit for workers: help pay down student loans.

Tim DeMello is CEO and founder of a Boston startup by the name of Gradifi.

The strings program at the near-south side's Latino Arts has been hailed for providing top-notch education, free of charge, to low-income Latino students across Milwaukee.

One highlight of the programs is their annual Guitar Festival for area youth. In fact, it was such a success that it grew to include not just a student competition, but also master classes for the whole community.